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Technorati and Me

Technorati is indexing me again! They had to make a code change to fix
the problem with my blog getting stuck in their queue. Kudos to Eric M.
and the guys at
GetSatisfaction.com
where they have "community powered support for Technorati".

Well, they're "sorta, kinda" indexing me anyway. It's on a 24 hour tape
delay or something. So I never get picked up by Memeorandum because they
pull from Technorati and Technorati has stuff I posted yesterday
listed as my latest blog entry. And that's old news to Memeorandum.

Wankers.

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You don't have to be just male or female on Facebook anymore. The social media
giant is adding a customizable option with about 50 different terms people can
use to identify their gender as well as three preferred pronoun choices: him,
her or them.

Really? Only three "preferred pronouns?" C'mon, you guys can do better than
that!

Facebook said the changes, shared with The Associated Press before the launch
on Thursday, initially cover the company's 159 million monthly users in the
U.S. and are aimed at giving people more choices in how they describe
themselves, such as androgynous, bi-gender, intersex, gender fluid or
transsexual.

Curiously missing from the list is "confused."

Masen Davis, executive director of the San Francisco-based Transgender Law
Center, said it may be hard for some people to understand the importance of
having the ability to select from multiple genders online. But he said many
transgender people will be thrilled with the change.

"We applaud Facebook for making it possible for people to be their authentic
selves online," he said.

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

Now, as a private company, Facebook is of course free to implement whatever
features they like. And if letting someone pretend he/she/it is an "authentic"
non-binary pangender transexual radfem activist, well it's obviously just
another way to increase the value of Zuck's stock options.

My concern is that Facebook hasn't gone far enough. All 50+ of their
gender-bender monikers still exist on a male — female continuum. There is
a box for "bigender," but not one for tri, quad, or penta-gender. Labels exist
for women becoming men, or men transforming into women. You can be a
"transgender person," which is apparently disjoint from those of you who
are "transexual persons." Not to worry though, FB has plenty of combinations
in between.

Which is all well and good.

But, what about
Vissians and
Andorians? Their sexuality is much more
complicated. Surely Facebook wouldn't want to discriminate against the
universe of Star Trek.

I mean, if you're going to entertain 50 fictions, why not throw in a few more?